Tag Archives: Obedience

Time for me to post something here, I reckon, and I think might do. The other day a document called “Correctio filialis de haeresibus propagatis“ (if your Latin is as bad as mine that translates as “A filial correction concerning the propagation of heresies”) was served on the Pope. What that document does is accuse him of teaching seven heresies. Not the kind of stuff that usually happens in the Catholic Church. In fact, the last time it happened was in 1333 to Pope John XXII. He later recanted his errors. I can’t really say that I see Francis doing that. I’m rather glad I’m not the recipient of that 25-page letter though.

Gene Veith over at Cranach spells out some of it, no doubt some of you know more than I do. He talks about the charges (for lack of a better description) and there is a link to the English translation of the document, I’ve only read the summary, so far. It’s copyrighted so I can’t give you much, but it concerns mostly this, “It lists the passages of Amoris laetitia in which heretical positions are insinuated or encouraged, and then it lists words, deeds, and omissions of Pope Francis which make it clear beyond reasonable doubt that he wishes Catholics to interpret these passages in a way that is, in fact, heretical.”

[Emphasis in the original]

Lots of this has to do, I gather, with giving communion to the divorced and remarried, and beyond that I’m not prepared to go. We’ve discussed this at great length. Search for COMMUNION FOR THE REMARRIED in the search box above if you don’t already know what most of us think. It always leads to much heat and some hurt feelings, so let’s not overly rehash it still again.

The one count that Dr. Veith and I both found a bit amusing is that they are accusing him of being Lutheran, or at least under Luther’s influence. Part of the reason I find that a bit amusing is that so few Lutherans could actually be convicted of that. Dr. Veith adds this,

I tend to have sympathy with the conservative side of theological controversies, though not on this issue. The sacrament is given specifically to sinners for the forgiveness of their sins (Matthew 26:28), and is not to be reserved only for those in a state of moral perfection. But that is one of the “Lutheran” teachings that Pope Francis has approximated and which the signers consider heretical.

But I still have sympathy for those who wrote and signed this letter. Conservative Catholics, almost by definition, revere and obey the papacy. To come to the conviction that the Pope is teaching heresy must be agonizing.

To believe that the Pope has violated the teachings of the Church Universal, that the papacy is not the protector of orthodoxy as has been assumed but a means of introducing innovative and problematic doctrines into the Church, can be a traumatic realization. And to take a stand on this conviction shows great integrity and courage.

The signers may consider Luther to be a heretic. But at least they know now how he felt.

Good thing it’s mostly bishops and academics signing this though. Henry VIII burned a few folks for that very thing, before he married one, of course. It was far from the longest marriage of his.

Indeed it must be a horrendous nightmare for any churchman to come to that feeling about any of his bishops, but the Pope! I don’t envy them, but I too admire them greatly. It must take great courage to put your name on that document.

They (whoever they may be) say that “May you live in interesting times” is a Chinese curse. I suspect we all understand why.

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On Tuesday I began what is going to turn into a series of posts about Catholicism and intellectual freedom. The locus classicus of this discussion for me is the debate between Gladstone and Newman caused by the former’s attack on what he called ‘Vaticanism’. For Gladstone, as for many Englishmen, Rome was the home of the a black legend of persecution and intellectual slavery. High Churchman though he was, Gladstone was never tempted to follow Newman or Manning across the Tiber; he was inoculated from their ‘Roman fever’ by his view of history. English history was the tale of moving from the darkness of feudal Catholicism to the light of Anglican constitutional government. He was no democrat, regarded it as a debased form of government where the mob might rule at the whim of a populist dictator. He was, he said, an ‘out and out inegalitarian’. If American democracy was at one end of the spectrum, the Vatican was at the other end. In his eyes what happened in Rome in 1871 was the revival of the old enemy of Papal absolutism. The dispute between Gladstone and Newman has to be seen against the background of the First Vatican Council (as it began to be called after its successor).

The Vatican Decrees of 1871 were controversial before and after the Council. Many Catholics, Newman included, had considered it inopportune to make any declaration about Papal Infallibility. Newman had aroused some controversy at the time when the contents of what was meant to be a private letter to Bishop Ullathorne were leaked the press. ‘Why’, he asked, ‘should an aggressive and insolent faction be allowed to make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord had not made sorrowful?’[i] Newman had not meant the letter for publication, but when it got into the press, he refused to retract his remarks, preferring instead to resort to his characteristic device of explaining with precision whom he had not meant by the offending comments. Many had supposed him to be referring to Manning and his Ultramontane colleagues; this Newman refused to confirm – or quite deny. By 1874 the controversy caused by the Decrees had quietened down, at least in the UK. But in November of that year Gladstone, who had lost power in the General Election six months earlier, published a pamphlet which poured petrol on the smouldering embers.

Gladstone’s The Vatican Decrees in their bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation was a sizeable publication of seventy two pages. In it, he denounced ‘Vaticanism’ and all the works of Pius IX. In highly inflammatory language, he argued that henceforth no Roman Catholic could be considered a loyal subject of the Queen.

The pamphlet was a best-seller, twenty five thousand copies were bought in the month after its publication in January 1874; by the end of the year 145,000 copies had been printed. Gladstone acknowledged that his language had been a little ‘rough’, but justified it by the seriousness of the matters under review, chief amongst which was ‘the question whether a handful of the clergy are or not engaged in an utterly hopeless and visionary attempt to Romanise the Church and people of England.’[ii] This, clearly, was aimed as much at the Tractarians in the Anglican Church as it was at Rome.

Not since ‘the bloody reign of Mary’ had such an enterprise been possible, he declared, but this was especially true now, because Rome had substituted ‘for the proud boast of simper eadem, a policy of violence and change in faith,’ and had ‘refurbished and paraded anew, every rusty tool she was fondly thought to have disused,’ and when ‘no one can become her convert without renouncing his moral and mental freedom, and placing his civil loyalty and duty at the mercy of another; and when she had equally repudiated modern thought and ancient history’[iii]

He listed eighteen propositions from the Syllabus to prove his last point, denying that his words were aimed at ‘Roman Catholics generally’; his target was ‘the Papal Chair’ and ‘its advisers and abettors’. The only fault of individual Catholics lay in their submission to such a tyranny, which rejected ‘the old historic, scientific and moderate school’ of Catholics epitomised in the contents of Newman’s letter to Ullathorne. In citing Newman, Gladstone was trying to ‘strengthen and hearten’ the moderate Catholic party generally.[iv] His way of going about this was, to say the least, most unfortunate; nothing was less liable to achieve such an aim than quoting Newman’s letter.

Gladstone’s pamphlet was welcomed by the Protestant world, not least by those Anglicans who had been pressing the Disraeli Government to pass legislation against Ritualism in the Church of England. Given the fact that Gladstone was himself a High Anglican, and that he had said little about Papal Infallibility at the time, despite the fact he had been Prime Minister then, the timing of his publication needs explaining before moving on to the question of why he mentioned Newman’s letter to Ullathorne.

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When Christians say they are ‘saved’, what do they mean? Let us begin, as we should, with what Our Lord says. To be saved, we must believe:

Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.

Jesus goes on to say: “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Mehas everlasting life”. So, as simple as that. If we have faith, we are saved. But Jesus does not stop there. One problem with the way we read the Gospel is that it tends to be in chunks, when, if you have ever seen early codices, you will see it was meant to be read in its entirety; chapters and verses are relatively novel; designed to help us, our fallen nature so often ensures it does no such thing.

Jesus told those who followed him asking for more bread: “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world”, to which “They said to Him, ‘Lord, give us this bread always’”. To clear up any doubt, Jesus told them: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.” We are told, now, by some, that this is a sort of metaphor, that all food gives us life, or some other explanation, but Jesus is clear. Indeed, he was so clear that the Jews listening were shocked. How could the son of Joseph be the ‘bread’ come down from heaven, and how could a man give them his flesh and blood to drink?

This was the perfect opportunity for Jesus to reassure them that he was not speaking literally. Why should they have thought he was? In verses 54-58 Jesus uses the word ‘trogo’. This is a word found only five times in the New Testament, and these are four of those times. It means ‘to chew’ or to ‘gnaw’, and in Greek is often used to describe the feeding habits of cattle and pigs. Up to this point in the Gospel, Jesus had been using the more usual word, ‘esthio’ (verses 49-53 all use it), so in changing the word he uses, Jesus is emphasising the literal nature of what he was saying; that was why the Jews took fright. He was telling them that to be saved we must eat his body and his blood – the connotations of cannibalism and of non-kosher food horrified his listeners – as he knew it would. He had ample opportunity to reassure them he was not talking literally. Indeed, as some left him, he had every reason to do so. He could quite easily have stopped many leaving him, but he did not do so.

He asked the Apostles if they wished to go; they did not, even thought they did not understand. It was only when they came to the Last Supper that they understood. That is why from the beginning. Christians have met to worship and to consume his body and his blood. St Paul passed this on to the Corinthians, as he had received it from the Apostles. Paul is clear about the literal nature of what was passed on to him, as he tells the Corinthians:

For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy mannereats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’sbody.

Jesus told us “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life”. So, yes, we must believe in Him as Lord, but we must also partake of His body and His blood. Dos that mean there is no other way to be saved? God alone decides who will be saved, and anyone who pronounces on that issue takes upon him or herself the power of God – and I suspect God will not be mocked in that way, He is a merciful and compassionate God, who alone knows the devices and desires of our hearts, and who, alone, can read what is written there. He is the only Just Judge, and we can leave such questions to Him. Our part is to serve obediently where we feel we have been called.

Few, familiar with the wider Catholic blogosphere, can be unaware of the presence there of those who not only criticise the current Pope (a thing I may have done a time or two myself) , but who deny that he – and for that matter his immediate predecessors – is Pope at all. They cite various things in order to ‘prove’ their case, one being that they have all taken part in ecumenical gatherings which, they claim, no Catholic Pope would do; the question ‘according to whom?’ naturally arises. One theme of recent posts has been the place of Tradition within the Church. St Paul wrote about the traditions, oral and written which he had received and was passing on. These include the Scriptures themselves. Jesus wrote no book. He could have done so, and as Christians, we believe that Scripture is divinely inspired, but it needs interpreting, and that is why Jesus founded a Church with a teaching authority.

The last Pope, Benedict XVI, was one of the most intelligent men ever to sit on the throne of St Peter, and he may well have been the best theologian ever to be Pope. But according to the wilder fringes of the Catholic blogosphere, we are asked to believe that this life-long, loyal and intelligent Catholic, knew so little about the history and theology of the Church in which he spent his entire adult life that he failed to spot what some new converts can see – that the Catholic Church has fallen away, and exists only in small pockets of the faithful, identifiable only to those who are ‘true’ Catholics. This is a Catholic (if it is Catholic at all) version of our friend Bosco with his talk about ‘the saved’ being able to identify those others who are ‘saved’. It is a version of what Protestants hold when they talk about the Church falling away in the time of Constantine; it is what non-Trinitarians say about the Trinity; it is what the Quartodecimans held about the decision to change the date at which the Passover started; it is what the Orthodox say about the filioque. The moment you decide that you know better than the teaching authority of the Church, then you must, perforce, fall back on one of two things: either your own unaided conscience; or the claim that your conscience is better informed by the Spirit than the Church founded by Christ. There is a third option – to insist that a particular point in time was the golden age, and that whatever it was the Church taught then it must profess in that form for ever. This was the claim of those who opposed Nicaea; it was the claim of those who opposed the teaching of the “Theotokos” and it was the claim of those who opposed Chalcedon.

Yet for all such lucubrations, the Church has a teaching authority, and that authority teaches, and what it teaches is not a dead set of rules set out in ancient books, it is the teaching of Jesus Christ Himself – it is, as Pope Francis has recently reminded us, the ‘Joy of the Gospel’. I see little sign of that joy in those who spend their time criticising the Pope because he does not fit in with their idea of what the Church ought to be. Benedict did not abdicate to make way for the College to elect individual bloggers as arbiters of the teaching of the Church, the College elected Francis. He reminded us all, two years ago, of something important, indeed something vital which we forget at our peril:

What does “People of God” mean? First of all it means that God does not belong in a special way to any one people; for it is He who calls us, convokes us, invites us to be part of his people, and this invitation is addressed to all, without distinction, for the mercy of God “desires all men to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4). Jesus does not tell the Apostles or us to form an exclusive group, a group of the elite. Jesus says: go out and make disciples of all people (cf. Mt 28:19). St Paul says that in the People of God, in the Church, “there is neither Jew nor Greek… for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:28). I would also like to say to anyone who feels far away from God and the Church, to anyone who is timid or indifferent, to those who think they can no longer change: the Lord calls you too to become part in his people and he does this with great respect and love! He invites us to be part of this people, the People of God!

Now, whilst, as with any Pope, this one is subject to criticism, here he enunciates something which a Church facing a secularised and/or hostile world, would do well to remember. That some orthodox Catholics might remind this Pope that what he said applies to them, despite some of his recent language, would be a better response to his scolding than claiming he is not the Pope.

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Once upon a time, not that long ago, it was a statement of the obvious to ask ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ Now, to many, that is a real question. To some the answer is plain enough, and if pressed, questions will be asked about others in the hierarchy too. What such statements have in common is the assumption that the individual making them is competent to judge the Pope and his or her bishop. That seems to me the essence of the Protestant viewpoint. It was the departure point for Luther, as it has been for all heresies. The Catholic Church has a Magisterium to pronounce on orthodoxy and heterodoxy; kind though it is of individuals to claim to be able to provide the same service, there is about it a presumption which is unattractive: who died and elected you Pope? That seems to me essentially Protestant – it assumes that the individual believer has the discernment to pronounce where the Church is silent. I wonder how many such individuals are, like myself, converts, and whether they are not carrying into their new Church, the mind-set of their old? I leave it there as an open questions, as I have no idea.

The modus operandi is certainly a Protestant one. It is to compile lists of statements from Church documents and to fashion them into a club with which to beat the Pope or bishops; it assumes, a priori that the Pope and the bishops are either unaware of such statements, or less able to pronounce on orthodoxy than the individual who has found the quotations on the Internet; that is what I mean by an essentially Protestant mind set.

That said, let us examine for a moment where such phenomena originate, and see where that gets us. Overwhelmingly, at least during this pontificate, it derives from a suspicion that this Pope is undermining the orthodox faith, that he is, himself, unorthodox, and that his is abusing his position to try to change the mind of the Church on matters where change is not possible. That it resembles the reaction of many Republicans to President Obama is not accidental, as the cross-over between such Republicans and such critics of the present Pope is a large one. But, once we have arrived at this point, what then?

The critics of the Pope are sincere in their views; but in other contexts, the same critics would not accept sincerity as a defence. A man who genuinely believed he was a woman would not get much sympathy in such circles by using that as a defence, so it is unclear why, by their own standard, the critics should be let off the hook by the ‘sincerity’ defence, or by the fact that the ‘feel’ what they feel very strongly. Their invocation of certain websites which ‘prove’ their case falls to the same criticism; those who reject the conclusions of most the world’s most qualified researchers on climate change because of what they have read on denier websites are not in a good position to use the same technique to criticise the Catholic Church. Or, if they do, then they are essentially saying they know better than the Pope and the majority of the Cardinals and bishops. I daresay that if you really think that the majority of the world’s scientists are wrong on something so important, then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have the intellectual arrogance to believe that the majority of the world’s Cardinals and Bishops also know less about what Catholicism is than you do; but there is equally little reason why the rest of us should accept such arrogance as a sign of infallibility.

It is understandable that, after the arduous journey home to Rome, the convert should want a quiet life, but from the beginning the Church has not offered that. This is because even St Paul and St John faced individuals who were sure that the Holy Spirit had told them what those two Saints had not been told, and that they had special insights denied to others. This was why Paul, like John, exhorted believers to rely on the traditions, oral and written, inherited from the past. But across the centuries the truth and weeds have grown up in the same field, as they always will, and it has been the job of the Magisterium to pronounce on the matter. As the monk, Luther, discovered, for the individual to take on that role is to begin the first step on a slippery slope.

Yes, as Catholics, we have a great concern for orthodoxy and tradition, but why proceed from the assumption that the Magisterium takes another view? We either believe that the Holy Spirit will guard the Church from material error, or we don’t, and if we act as though He can only do so with our help as a key-board warrior, then we incur the sin of presumption. Obedience is easy, so is tolerance, when we obey and tolerate that with which we agree.

In conclusion, let us recall what the Lord Jesus told Mother Julian in the thirteenth ‘showing’:

“In my folly, before this time I often wondered why, by the great foreseeing wisdom of God, the onset of sin was not prevented: for then, I thought, all should have been well. This impulse was much to be avoided, but nevertheless I mourned and sorrowed because of it, without reason and discretion.

“But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that is needed by me, answered with these words and said: ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’

Liberalism is a much abused word. In some American contexts it seems almost to be a synonym for socialism, and in Christians contexts it is usually synonymous with unorthodoxy if not downright heresy. The latest incarnation of this phenomenon is its attachment to the word ‘elite’, in, for example, the liberal elite lost Brexit and Trump’s triumph is a revolt against the ‘liberal elite’. Our new Prime Minister, Mrs May, has joined in attacking the ‘smug liberal elite’ who sneered at those who voted for Brexit. In her case one wonders if she was referring to her immediate predecessor and his good friend the Chancellor; she is clearly not referring to herself or her hedge fund manager husband who, whilst most certainly part of the elite, and almost certainly voting against Brexit, clearly do not consider themselves liberals. There is an oddness in this. It most certainly was not a conservative instinct which led to the formation of democratic forms of government, nor was it one which advocated universal education, women’s rights, equal rights for coloured people, or, come to think of it, almost any reform you can name. Indeed, in British politics, the area I know best, where it was a Conservative who pushed some reform or other, it was usually one with a prefix ‘liberal’ such as Peel or Disraeli. One might expect liberalism to have a somewhat better reputation than it has. But perhaps it only has a bad one in conservative circles?

In Christian circles it is perhaps more understandable that those who favour reform should come under suspicion; quite often their motives, like their objectives, appear to be to replace orthodoxy with an ‘anything goes’ version of the ‘faith once given’. Yet, reform is a constant necessity. Newman’s definition of liberalism bears repeating: ‘Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another.’ This, to his way of thinking, was untrue. Either the Catholic Church and what it taught was the Church founded by Jesus, in which case its dogma were the expression of immutable truths, or they were not, in which case it really didn’t matter very much because there was no solid foundation from truth.

This was one reason Newman thought that the emphasis on the Bible alone as the foundation of your faith was misguided. Long before the later Victorian obsession with religious scepticism and source criticism of the Bible, Newman was aware, via his friend Pusey, of the work of German Bible scholars in Gottingen who were querying everything from the notion that the world was made in six days, through to the dimensions of the ark and the physics of resurrection. He knew that literal readings of Scripture were coming under question, and he looked for the remedy to the organisation which gave the world the Bible in the first place – the Church. 1900 years of the Church and of men (and a few women) reflecting on the Good News provided a rich resource for understanding the Bible in context – what Newman’s later admirer, Pope Benedict XVI called ‘the hermeneutic of continuity’. Newman distinguished between reform and development. Doctrines developed. So, the Trinity, though not called such anywhere in Scripture, is there, and the Nicene Creed reflects the long discussion within Christendom about how to read Scripture on the subject. That being so, it was not up for renegotiation in some process by which it became something else. That was one of the main reasons he crossed the Tiber. Many of us followed suite for similar reasons.

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A great deal of fuss has been made about the ‘Dubia’ from the four cardinals to the Pope and his refusal to answer them. Readers of the Catholic press will be familiar with the divisions over Amoris Laetitia. They concern the moral law, the nature of the sacraments and the authority of previous teaching. But it comes down to the question: can remarried Catholics receive Communion if they aren’t living as brother and sister? The Church has always been clear that the answer to this is ‘no’, but it is equally clear that pastoral practice has varied, not least in the sorts of circumstances people find themselves in in a society where late conversions are common and civil divorce very easy. These are new circumstances and for the representatives of the Church simply to insist on a binary answer which would fit all cases, might lead to injustice; but for the Pope not to reply might risk another sort of injustice, in which the faithful look up and are fed stones.

Whatever answer to Pope gave, it would seem unlikely to change the reality at parish level. We are told that the use of contraception among Catholics is common, and yet, if one looks at the lines for Communion and one took them at face value, you’d not suppose that at all – quite the opposite. In the end the individual knows their situation, as does their confessor, and to pronounce in the abstract would simply to be to assert what no one has challenged – which is that the recent Synods did not change the teaching of the Church with regard to communion for the divorced, however much some would like to to have done so, and however much those who would have liked this claim it has. This is a matter on which the teaching of the Church is clear, and where pastoral practice clearly varies. It is not the only such issue.

No doubt those calling on the Pope to say something more have their reasons for so doing, and no doubt the Holy Father has his reasons for not responding. For the individual Catholic, it is hard to see what is unclear. Those who wish for clarity have already found it in pastoral practice, which varies according to what the confessor knows of his flock; this is right and proper. The Church is not a penal colony, it is a field hospital in a world where Sin is injuring and has injured many Faithful. Those who want clarity have it in the age-old teaching of the Church; if they wish to apply it to every individual regardless of circumstances then, to use a word much beloved of the Pope, that would seem a trifle ‘rigid’. So the Holy Father may be showing much wisdom in letting things lie where they are, because in practice, it is the individual conscience which knows where truth lies, and if that conscience is formed well by the confessor, then we can be sure that what is done is what ought to be done.

The other day Philip Augustine asked me in a comment how Luther’s Two Kingdoms squared with Aquinas’ thoughts on tyrannicide. Here’s the comment

On a side note, I’m perplexed with Luther’s stance on loyalty to Princes and going against Aquinas’ thoughts on tyrannicide.

I frankly don’t know enough about Aquinas’ views to give a coherent, let alone good answer. But I have run across what seems to me a good exposition of both Luther’s “Two Kingdoms” as well as St. Augustine’s “Two Cities” and how one grew from the other, as well as how American Lutherans have taken these thoughts and updated them for our society.

I found these quite fascinating and hope you do as well, considering they shed considerable light on many of our contemporary issues.

Though Luther and Calvin shared the belief that to rebel was to dispute against the order instated by God (Luther 1983: Vol. 44, 45) both writers maybe interpreted as permitting tyrannicide in certain circumstances (Luther 1983:Vol. 46; Vol. 45: 113). Luther held that only the whole community couldcondemn the tyrant to death (Waring 1968: 14–16) but Calvinist principles provided for a ‘duty of resistance to tyrants and the right of deposing kings’(Wight 1992: 11). Similarly, Calvin openly permitted the right of resistance bythose organs of government entrusted with restraining Monarchical power, suchas the Estates, and though he denied the right to kill a tyrant, he did suggest thatresistancemight beauthorised byarepresentative council (Neumann 1957: 159

Whereas Aquinas says this

Through a series of objections and counters Aquinas concludes that like the Holy Martyrs who ‘suffered death rather than obey the impious orders of tyrants’, ‘when there is no recourse to a superior by whom judgment can be made… then he who slays a tyrant to liberate hisfatherland is praised and receives a reward’ (1985b: Distinction 44, Question 2,Article 1). Similar to the conception of freedom under Roman law, Aquinas likens the state of tyranny to slavery (1985a: Vol. 41) and claims that there isno difference between being subject to a tyrant and being ravaged by a wildbeast (1988: 20).

The main difference that I see here is that Aquinas allows one person acting alone to perform Tyrannicide whereas Luther maintains that it must be the community acting in concert.

I want to follow up on something Phillip Augustine said on my last post because I think it is important. Here is his comment.

Honestly, I’ve said this to a few folks lately, even a good friend who is a Missouri-Synod Pastor agrees, that we need to start resisting secular government that if they force us to betray our moral conscience that we must force them to imprison us. After all, the world will never see us as oppressed unless there are chains on our wrist.

Yes, and it reminded me of Rev Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, where he said this to other clergy questioning him on why he had disobeyed the law.

One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.

Now remember, it presupposes that one is willing to pay the price, civil or criminal, as Dr. King, Dr. Boehnhoefer, and even Dr. Luther were. It’s by no means ‘virtue signaling’, there are often real penalties, even including your life, for this.

There is a long tradition for this, stretching back to the Greeks, as so much does. Specifically, the idea of law that transcends the civil law dates back to Socrates, what we would call natural law. In the Christian tradition, it goes back to St Augustine, who said that an unjust law is no law. Although he and Luther both said that we must obey our ‘princes’, well St. Thomas Aquinas would likely disagree, as when he defended the idea that unjust laws did not bind the citizen in conscience.

John Locke (1632–1704) taught that the government derived its authority from the people, that one of the purposes of the government was the protection of the natural rights of the people, and that the people had the right to alter the government should it fail to discharge its fundamental duties.

Thoreau.

The writer who made the theory famous, put it into practice, and gave the practice the name “civil disobedience” was Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). His ideas on the subject are found in the celebrated lecture that he delivered in 1848 to the Concord Lyceum in Massachusetts, under the title “On the Relation of the Individual to the State. […]

Two principles underlie Thoreau’s conception of civil disobedience. The first is that the authority of the government depends on the consent of the governed. The second is that justice is superior to the laws enacted by the government, and the individual has the right to judge whether a given law reflects or flouts justice. In the latter case the individual has the duty to disobey the law and accept the consequences of the disobedience nonviolently.

This is what Bonhoeffer was speaking of, although he found it acceptable to go beyond civil disobedience to actual armed insurrection when he spoke of “The third way “is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to jam a spoke in the wheel itself.”

None of these are pleasant prospects, and yet, as Christians, at some point, we are justified to do whatever is necessary to bring our countries back to the rule of God’s (Natural) Law.

Paul appeals to Philemon on a number of grounds, Chrysostom tells us in his Homilies on Philemon: the quality of his person, his age, and most of all, because he is a ‘prisoner of Jesus’. Paul speaks eloquently of Onesimus, in exactly the same terms he uses for Timothy, and he reminds Philemon that his slave is born again in Christ. Paul is mindful that Onesimus still belongs to Philemon, and so he brings before him the admirable qualities which he says will be useful to him (Paul) in the service of Jesus. God rules, Paul reminds him, not by tyranny or coercion, but by love and encouragement – he wants us to willingly give ourselves to his service – and this is the model which Paul suggests to Philemon with regard to Onesimus. Since it would be to the glory and service of God, Paul suggests that in behaving as God wants, Philemon would be doing a good work in helping Onesimus to help Paul spread God’s word.

St Jerome thought that verse 14. in which Paul talks about goodness not being by compulsion, answers the question of why God gave man free will and did not just make us automatically good and obedient. God is good not by some impersonal necessity he is so, but because it is in his essence that he freely wills his own goodness, and since we are made in his image, he wants us to choose to be good.

Paul wisely uses the word ‘perhaps’ in verse 15, since Onesimus did not flee his master to achieve God’s work, but from the desire to escape his master; this is also designed to show Philemon that Paul is judging impartially.

Chrysostom comments on the uselessness of names in describing good and evil in men, for there are many who are masters who are wicked, drunkards and dissemblers, and many a slave who is upright and good. Is the man who is slave to drink or greed in any way really free? Sin is the harshest of slave masters. Paul shows Philemon how wonderful God’s ways are and invited him to cooperate in the spreading of the Good News.

"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." J.R.R. Tolkien <br>“I come not from Heaven, but from Essex.” William Morris